


Repeat From Star To End of Row

by mousapelli



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Established Relationship, Knitting, Loneliness, M/M, Post-Kingdom Hearts III, Re:Mind Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:55:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22553626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mousapelli/pseuds/mousapelli
Summary: Riku has spent so much time waiting, and still has no idea how to fill up all the time in this new lost year. When no one else's suggestions help, Lea offers something to keep Riku's hands busy: crocheting. Mild spoilers for the end of KH3 and Re:Mind.
Relationships: Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 28
Kudos: 181





	Repeat From Star To End of Row

**Author's Note:**

  * For [foxdreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxdreams/gifts).



> I was trying to write something light-hearted about knitting for Foxdream's birthday, and then blurted out this 5.7k monstrosity in all its sad glory. I'M SORRY. I HOPE YOU DON'T HATE IT. It has a happy ending I promise! 
> 
> Kristin always says she likes when people go off in fic about something they clearly have a passion for and know all kinds of ridiculous details, what I know a whole heckin lot about is crocheting. So here you go. 
> 
> And before any knitters get mad about the one line, I do both knit and crochet! But crocheting is definitely faster so I find it infinitely more satisfying like Lea does.

Riku had thought he'd understood waiting back when he was a teenager on the islands, frustrated by the slow crawl of the days, by the routine of his small life, by the track of the sun that rose and fell in the same spot on the horizon every day. As a fifteen-year-old, everything had seemed like a wait until something, whether staring at a clock willing the school day to end or marking off days until Saturday so Sora could sleep over. Every time his mother, impatient with his acting out, said, "Wait until you're older, you'll understand" Riku could feel irritation sparking inside his chest, because how could he not understand when _everything_ was waiting?

He hadn't understood anything. 

The year that Sora slept in the pod, Riku thought he understood waiting. Waiting was filling up hours of time, days, with small tasks and missions, with gathering information and visiting worlds, and still having a whole hourglass of sand that refused to fall into the bottom half. Sometimes he slept for hours and hours, other times didn't sleep hardly at all for days at a time, trying to find the ratio that would let him feel like time was actually passing instead of like he was running a treadmill set just slightly slower than comfortable running speed. He'd had DiZ back then, sending him here and there to do things, and even if Riku had suspected that some of the tasks were invented just to get him out from underfoot for a while, at least they kept him from thinking too hard. 

But this time, there was no DiZ. There was no monitoring screen with a percent sign for Riku and Naminé to lean over anxiously. There was no pod, no Sora to watch to reassure Riku that he was still safe, no flutter of eyelashes, no soft heartbeat on the monitor for Riku to time the seconds against. There was no calendar marked with a Friday sleepover, no progress bar climbing to 100%, nothing in front of Riku but a long, empty road that reached to nowhere, with no promise that Sora was at the end of it.

Riku wasn't even sure how much time had to go by before he was allowed to start panicking, or telling anybody else that he was panicking, after his big, mature speech about trusting Sora and letting him go. He held onto his panic as long as he could, dreading the part where panic faded to a distant background hum and the real waiting started. In the middle of visiting all the worlds he could reach the second time it set in, and Riku found himself walking to places instead of running, simply because it would eat up more time, lingering in worlds to look for clues rather than rushing immediately off to the next one. 

After that, it was a matter of filling up hours until they had a new idea. 

The offer to come stay at Land of Departure as its steward while Terra, Aqua, and Ventus went back and forth to the Realm of Darkness was clearly just to give Riku something to do, but Riku didn't begrudge Aqua and Yen Sid for coming up with that between them. It was flattering, whatever the reason, and it was a change of scenery. The halls and rooms there were beautiful and full of light, soaring ceilings encouraging Riku to look up, stained glass reminding Riku of glowing heart stations. Riku spent almost the entire time Terra, Aqua, and Ventus were gone on their first trip just exploring the place from top to bottom, finding every nook and secret passage, learning which stairs connect to what hall, and marveling the entire time how this open, sunlit place could have ever been the featureless labyrinth of Castle Oblivion. 

Besides, here there was the library. It was the craziest library Riku had ever seen, and Riku had certainly seen some shit by that point. It took Riku's breath away the first time he swung the doors open and looked around. Dust motes danced in sunbeams pouring in the lofty windows, the furniture was warm, welcoming wood, and everything smelled of faint magic and old books and leather. He spent that entire afternoon drifting from shelf to shelf, just trying to understand the organization of the place. He'd expected the books on magic theory, on worlds travel, on synthesis, on keyblade history and lore; when he came across the shelf of what basically amounted to Keyblade Master romance novels, Riku had to close his eyes against the pulsing ache in his chest over how delighted Sora would be by these. It took him minutes on end to drag himself away. 

"I'll be back," he told the books quietly, eyes dragging along the lurid colors and looping title fonts of the spines, until he was gone around the corner. 

A week later, Aqua found him in the middle of a table stacked with heavy theory books when she and the others returned. She looked tired but amused as she glanced from Riku's current table, to the next two tables over similarly covered. 

"I, um," Riku said sheepishly, "don't really understand the system to reshelve them in the right places." It makes her laugh at least, still chuckling when she reported that she'd been waiting ten years to punish a student with library organization the same way as Eraqus had punished her and Terra so many times when they were younger. 

So a few weeks passed of Riku reading, endlessly. He started with the things that seemed most relevant, theory textbooks and heart link legends, keeping a journal of anything interesting to take back to discuss with Master Yen Sid. When the others were there he was more responsible in his use of hours, but when Riku was alone he read from morning until light faded from the windows, until his growling stomach reminded him he'd forgotten to eat again, until he had a perpetual migraine pulsing over his left eye. Even that didn't stop him, half an elixir mixed into his mug of cooling tea reducing the throb of it to something bearable, like a soft heartbeat. 

Eventually he started reading everything, as likely to be explaining regional differences in potion origins over tea with Aqua as to be arguing with Ventus about which famous Keyblade master from the age of fairy tales would beat up which other one. Sometimes he accidentally slipped from one of those conversations into the other kind without realizing it, not realizing his mouth had run off with him until whoever his tortured audience happened to be interrupted him. 

"Riku," Master Yen Sid says gravely, setting down his teacup, "while I'm somewhat impressed by your detailed command of all the keyblades Master Ynos ever named in his journals, I think perhaps you could benefit from spending some hours of your day outside of the library."

"Er." Riku felt his ears go pink at the tips at being caught rambling again. "Right."

"And perhaps some glasses?" Yen Sid continued dryly. "You're squinting."

Armed with a pair of reading glasses from the good fairies, Riku returned to the Land of Departure to find a couple Twilight Townies filling up the kitchen along with his usual castlemates. 

"Wow," Roxas said over his mug of hot chocolate. "Those are some nerd glasses."

"Wanna borrow them?" Riku retorted on the way by. "Maybe you can trick your math teacher into letting you pass if you at least look smart."

"Ooh, burn," Lea said while Xion and Naminé burst into laughter. 

Since he was even getting lectures from Yen Sid about not occupying himself well enough, Riku tried asking asking the others what they did with their time. 

He tried working out with Terra, which was satisfying for a while. But after they came up with a workout regimen for him and he'd gone through it enough times to not have to think about which exercise came next or how many reps, it stopped being enough of a distraction. Riku's mind wandered while he went through the motions, and too much time to think was exactly what he was trying to avoid. 

Aqua asked if he wanted to help bake next. Although he enjoyed sitting in the kitchen and talking with her, Riku wasn't very good at the act of baking itself and it reminded him too much of how Sora had gotten so interested in cooking. On the third batch of cookies that tasted basically like sugared wheat discs, Riku offered just to sit at the table with a mug to keep his hands to himself, and Aqua accepted that offer gladly. 

Ventus's pitch, somewhat unexpectedly, was chess. Or really any strategy game that could be played on a chess board, and Ventus knew a surprising amount of different ones. He was a solid player, prone a bit more to unexpected moves than pure strategy, which kept Riku guessing especially at first. Aqua always beat him, Ventus explained, and Terra never did, so playing somebody new was definitely preferable. Once Ventus realized that Riku had a difficult time telling him no directly about anything, Ventus dragged him into game after game. It was an excellent distraction, but only when Ventus was there, and not in the Realm of Darkness or off on some other mission. 

The Twilight Town group started visiting more often, sometimes all of them, sometimes just Xion and Naminé, or Lea by himself, depending on who was busy with what. They always seemed to show up while Aqua, Terra, and Ventus were away. 

"I don't need to have playdates set up," Riku told Aqua the second time that Lea popped out of a dark corridor the same morning she and the others were scheduled to leave. 

"You don't need to be alone so much either," Aqua replied, rolling up the last of her papers to stick in her bag. She gave Riku a sharp smile that said she wouldn't be taking any comments on the matter. "Play nice with the other kids."

"Helloooo, I'm right here!" Lea said, gesturing at himself. "And I'm here for serious training, chief, so if this feels like a playdate to you, maybe you oughta go look up some new ideas in your Keyblade Master's manual or something."

Riku's eyes narrowed. "You're really asking for it, you know."

"Now we're getting somewhere!" Lea exclaimed, slapping Riku's shoulder hard enough to sting. "Gotta get my money's worth."

"You aren't paying me!" Riku shouted at Lea's back as he sauntered off to drop off his stuff. The only answer he got was Lea's laughter ringing off the staircase. 

After an afternoon of beating up on Lea to the extent that he was able, Riku was not expecting Lea to appear in the library after dinner with a sizable tote bag slung over one shoulder. 

"This seat taken?" Lea asked. He yanked out the chair next to Riku and flopping into it without waiting for an answer. The tote bag had a Blazing Crystal emblem painted on it in metallic paint, and above that was painted 'AXEL' in uneven but passable calligraphy.

"Suit yourself," Riku said, watching curiously as Lea reached into the bag to rummage around. "Not sick of me yet?"

Lea snorted. "Not like there's anyone else to hang out with, and I need a hand with this." When Lea pulled out a hank of twisted yarn as long as his forearm and as bright green as his eyes, Riku honestly was more surprised than if Lea had yanked out a rabbit. Lea brandished the yarn. "Actually two hands. Put 'em up."

"Wh…at?" Riku asked, wondering if this was really happening, or if he'd fallen asleep on the library table and was having a bizarre dream. Again. 

"Gotta wind it into a ball," Lea explained, or at least sounded like he was explaining something, even though nothing he said made any sense to Riku. Lea tugged one of Riku's arms up, hand in the air and elbow on the table, and then the other, as if Riku were signaling a field goal. Then with one deft motion he untwisted the yarn so that it made a big loop, and dropped the loop over Riku's hands. "Otherwise it gets all tangled, you see."

Feeling like he'd just been improperly lassoed, Riku tried again. "What?"

"A ball," Lea repeated, fiddling with the yarn until he produced the end of it. "Gotcha!" Pulling gently enough that he freed some yarn without yanking the whole hank off Riku's hands, Lea did something quickly with his fingers that resulted in a smaller batch of loops, and then began to wrap the yarn around itself. 

After a minute of watching, Riku realized that Lea was winding a ball out of the yarn, like he'd said. He'd certainly seen balls of yarn before, when visiting Kairi's grandmother or Sora's mother, but he'd always thought they came that way.

"Don't they sell yarn already in balls?" Riku asked. 

"Not the good stuff," Lea said with authority. The ball was bigger now, yarn pulling off Riku's hands faster, and Riku had to watch to make sure only one string came off at a time. "This is hand-dyed, my friend, all natural. None of that acrylic junk! I have sensitive skin."

Suppressing the urge to ask, "What?" a third time, Riku simply gave in and let himself be used as a…yarn winder? Was that a thing? It took less time than Riku had expected for Lea to finish his task, the yarn pulling faster and faster the bigger Lea's ball got. When the end of it slipped off Riku's wrists, Lea squished it between his hands as if testing its give, then nodded, satisfied. 

"Thanks, boss," he said. He set the ball on the table and reached back into the tote bag to rummage around some more. 

Riku wrinkled his nose. "Don't call me that."

"Why not? You're in charge." Lea pulled out a blue metal hook about the size of a pencil, eyed it critically, then dropped it back in the bag and pulled out a green one instead. "And it's a lot less weird than calling a kid shorter than me and ten years younger 'master.' Let's try it out: thanks for holding my yarn, Master Riku."

"Stop it," Riku ordered, forcing himself not to fidget at the use of his title. It still felt like an awkward weight on his shoulders, something he hadn't grown into yet. "Just Riku is fine."

"You got it, boss," Lea said easily. 

Rolling his eyes at Lea's obvious desire to nettle him, Riku turned back to his book. He expected Lea to continue trying to distract him, and was mildly surprised when Lea kept to himself, busily occupied with his yarn and his hook. The room was quiet except for Lea occasionally muttering to himself, counting. Every now and then Riku's eyes drifted over to see what Lea was doing. He honestly couldn't make heads or tails of it himself, since it just looked like Lea was creating a very long, thin worm. 

"What are you knitting?" he finally asked, giving up on his book for the moment. It was boring anyway, something about heart links that had seemed promising at first but quickly dwindled into pedantic theory that made Riku doubt the author had ever linked with so much as a kumquat. 

"Excuse me, I'm not knitting. I'm _crocheting_ ," Lea said, sounding mildly affronted. 

"What's the difference?" Riku asked. 

"Knitting is two needles and a lot of loops," Lea explained, pausing to examine a few of his stitches. "Crocheting is one hook and one loop. Also it's _infinitely superior_ in terms of speed, no matter what that kook Merlin says. Anyway it's a blanket."

"It…is?" Riku eyed the yarn worm, wondering if any part of this conversation was ever going to make sense. 

"Will be, eventually. Roxas and Xion's apartment was like a refrigerator last time I slept over and it's not even winter yet! Maybe replicas have their own thermostats or something…damn, I lost count." Lea held up the crocheted worm, stretching his arms out to pull it straight across his chest. "That look long enough to you?"

"Long enough for what?" Riku asked, perplexed. 

"For a _blanket_ ," Lea said, exasperated, as if Riku were the dumbass here. "What have we been talking about for five solid minutes? Get it memorized, geez." Lea eyed Riku's blank look. "Look, the bottom edge has to be as long as you want the finished thing to be wide, see? If I fuck it up, I'll end up with like a stupid superhero cape."

"Seems all right," Riku offered. He thought about the first time he'd been really cold at night, in Hollow Bastion, huddling under the blankets. "Maybe a little longer if you want to wrap it around your shoulders."

"Yeah, better add some more," Lea agreed. He went back to weaving the hook in and out of the yarn. Riku found himself watching, trying to figure out how Lea was making it happen, but his wrist and fingers were moving too quickly for Riku to grasp it. Sensing Riku watching, Lea asked, "What?"

"Nothing," Riku said quickly. Lea looked up, eyebrow raised. "I've never actually watched someone do that before."

"What?" Lea snorted. "Don't they teach you kids this kind of stuff where you come from?"

Riku tilted his head, thinking. "Maybe girls? In Home Ec? No, I think they just sew. Kairi was terrible at it. Knitting is definitely not a thing boys do on Destiny Islands."

"Hey! Don't make this some gender thing," Lea said, pointing his hook at Riku threateningly. "This is a useful life skill! All Radiant Garden kids learn this stuff at school, trying to keep us busy. Idle hands, you know." Lea wiggled his eyebrows comically, making Riku wrinkle his nose. "Good thing, too, not like there was much to do in the Castle That Never Was in your downtime, kept me from going crazy…well, more crazy." Lea paused, eyeing Riku. "Wanna learn?"

Riku opened his mouth, then closed it, frowning in thought. "Would you teach me to do it?"

Lea shrugged a shoulder. "Taught Roxas and Xion it, sure. Roxas is too impatient to finish anything, but Xion managed a scarf so far, sort of."

"I'm not sure I'll be any good," Riku warned. He rubbed at his badly-healed wrist, flexing his fingers. "I've lost some of my fine motor control."

"You know, it's the kind of thing you can sort of suck at and still enjoy?" Lea offered, chuckling ruefully. "It's, I dunno, soothing. I'm game if you are."

"All right," Riku said, nodding. "I'm in."

Lea was, somewhat surprisingly, a pretty decent teacher. He produced another blob of yarn from inside the bottomless tote bag, blue this time, and the extra hook, and shoved them into Riku's hands. Lea patiently showed Riku how to start even when Riku had to start over for the fourth time, and said not to worry about it when Riku looked balefully from his lopsided chain stitch to Lea's neat row. Riku was the one who got fed up first, annoyed with how his hands didn't seem to have any idea how to hold the hook or move the yarn or do anything useful. 

Eventually he produced a sloppy row of single crochets, and the only thing Lea scolded him for was for being down on himself. 

"You just started like an hour ago, would you ease up on yourself?" Lea slid the hook and the yarn out of Riku's hand and finished his short row in the time it would have taken Riku to do a single stitch. "First row always looks shitty anyway, promise. And I'm definitely gonna find you a bigger hook, you're all tense so all your stitches are microscopic. You'll never get your hook back in these things." Lea pushed Riku's questionable work back into his hands. "Here's the fun part. If you want to take out a part that looks shitty, you just yank on the end and it comes right back out. Go on, try it."

Riku gave a firm yank, and ok, it was kind of pleasing to watch his awful work disappear. "That's kind of satisfying."

"I know, right?" Lea laughed. "Seriously, though, start over or you'll just forget how and then I'll have to teach you this sucky part all over again tomorrow. Slip knot first." Lea paused, watching Riku scrabble with the yarn. "Geez, what the heck is that? I thought at least you ocean kids would be ok at knots." 

"I will make you eat this hook if you don't shut up," Riku snapped, making Lea laugh so hard he snorted. 

It took about a week for Lea to show Riku everything he knew about crocheting, most of the bigger stitches just combinations of of the simpler ones, and after that it was down to a matter of practicing on his own with a scribbled set of directions in Lea's cramped handwriting on how to make easy things like a hat or a scarf. It did get easier after a little while, even though Riku thought his attempts all looked somewhat dubious. Riku still felt awkward about crocheting in front of anyone else, but days when he was by himself, he found himself going back to it more and more, especially in the evenings after he'd spent too much time reading again. 

It was soothing, just as Lea had promised. Something about the repetitive motion of crocheting was calming, keeping his mind just occupied enough not to think about anything else while not requiring any serious thought either. Some days when sadness welled up in his chest, which was more and more often as time dragged on, when even reading couldn't hold his attention, he could at least talk himself into crocheting for a little while, or winding a few balls of yarn. 

The Land of Departure didn't have seasons, but Radiant Garden did. One of those seasons was winter, which was how Riku found himself in front of a Mid-Winter Festival market with Naminé's arm hooked through his. Riku was trying to enjoy himself but mostly failing, all the decorations and food stalls around him to mark the passage of time just reminding Riku that Sora had been missing for six months already, with nothing to show for it. 

Naminé didn't press Riku about whether he was enjoying himself, which Riku appreciated, seeming satisfied that Riku had agreed to come visit her for a change, and was outside walking around. Riku found himself watching her more than the market itself, glad to see the small changes that meant she was becoming more herself. She had grown a few centimeters, up to Riku's shoulder now, and she'd started to favor brighter colors, like the blue plaid shirtdress she was currently wearing underneath a charcoal gray sweater coat. She'd been growing her hair out, although right now all of it was swept up in a shapeless beanie of obnoxiously cheerful pinks and oranges that Riku suspected Xion had made. 

It was nice, to see her growing, and it hurt, remembering how much Sora had loved bright, loud colors too. 

"You're staring," Naminé said, although she didn't sound bothered about it. She looked up from the display of barrettes they were standing in front of to examine Riku's expression. 

"Just thinking that you come by your terrible fashion sense honestly," Riku said, trying for a lighthearted tone that he didn't feel at all. 

Naminé laughed for him anyway, clear as a bell for a second before she covered it with one hand. She tugged him away from the jewelry stall. "Come on, Xion would hate all of these. I think I saw a yarn stall over there."

There was indeed a yarn stall, full of what Lea had called 'the good stuff.' As Naminé tutted to herself about colorways, Riku brushed his fingers over twist after twist of yarn, their softness pleasant and satisfying. It was easy to see why the stall had caught Naminé's eye, many of the hanks hand-dyed in surprising mixes of colors; this one had pink and green like a watermelon, that one orange and slate blue like a sunset over pine trees, one down lower was a riot of peach and purple like Riku didn't even know what. There were so many, apparently more ways to stick colors together than Riku had ever thought there could be. 

"You should get some too," Naminé spoke up, interrupting Riku's thoughts. She had an armful of yarn in pink, goldenrod, and green, which Riku immediately did think looked like Xion even though he'd never seen Xion wear any of those colors. The smile she gave Riku this time was sweet and a little bit sad. "You should make him something."

"Oh," Riku said, looking away; the ache in his chest was suddenly unbearable. "I don't…"

"Yes, you do," Naminé cut him off, gentle but firm. She turned to the wall of colors in front of them, cutting off any argument. "I'll help you pick a color. These are nice because the yarn changes color for you, so you just have to keep crocheting."

Riku settled on one of the less eye-blinding color choices: half was bright red, the kind that always made him think of Sora, the other half a deep gray that reminded Riku of the plaid in Sora's fairy-made hoodie. In between, where the dyes had bled into each other, was a sort of cinnamon, like Sora's hair close to his scalp, where the sun couldn't get at it to bleach it lighter. 

"Perfect," Naminé said, slipping her hand into Riku's for just a second, squeezing it tight. "I think we need some hot chocolate now."

So Riku made a scarf. 

It took forever. Riku started and quit more than one pattern before he settled on one that didn't look either too simple or too girly. Even once he got started properly, he was still a slow crocheter, and he yanked it all out and started it over at least half a dozen times. It was like Penelope's funeral shroud, Riku thought to himself blackly as he was unraveling the fifth attempt, weaving the thing by day and picking it apart by night, hoping that if it took long enough Odysseus would miraculously appear before its completion. 

But Riku had time. Riku had nothing but time after so many months of all of them exhausting all of their ideas. And eventually the scarf did get finished. Riku stared at it for a long time, soft and warm in his hands, strangely numb about its completion. A part of him, a terrible, howling part of him gone feral with waiting, wanted to tear the whole thing apart and start all over again, as if he could conjure the scarf's recipient out of thin air if he just did the ritual right this time. 

Riku forced him to put the scarf down, to fold it and put it in a drawer of his desk, then forced himself to go outside. He sat in the dark, looking up at the stars for a long, long time. Eventually Ventus came out and sat with him, shoulder to shoulder, a comforting presence precisely because he wasn't trying to say anything comforting.

"Thanks, Ven," Riku said, when he felt like he had pulled himself at least halfway together. 

"I didn't do anything," Ventus murmured, arms wrapped tight around his knees. "But sure."

The scarf stayed in Riku's drawer, Riku carefully not thinking about it much. He tried to start another project, but his heart wasn't in it. His heart wasn't in much of anything in those last agonizing weeks. Riku dragged himself through days that felt like a hundred years each, trying not to notice the looks that Aqua and Yen Sid and Mickey were all giving him. 

And then finally there was a break, and Riku really did forget about the scarf because everything seemed to happen all at once, as if time were a spring that had been stretched out as far as it would go and was finally released, the ends snapping together so that Cid saying he might have some news slammed directly into Riku dragging Sora out of ocean, deadweight but solid under his hands. 

Time continued to move strangely in the weeks after Sora's rescue. Riku lost days at a time to sleep after exhausting all of his physical and magical reserves, followed by weeks of disrupted circadian rhythm under the lights of Ienzo's lab while they struggled to keep Sora's barely-patched together heart from shattering all over again. When Ienzo and Ansem finally agreed that Riku and Sora could at least move out of the lab to an apartment nearby, it took days for either of them to be able to sleep without the hum of machinery around them. 

Sora's progress was slow, but Riku didn't mind the wait this time. If some days ended before Riku felt like he'd woken up fully, and others seemed to last half an age, Riku didn't care now that he wasn't facing them alone. 

"It's getting kinda cold lately, huh?" Sora asked during one of their walks home from the lab. Sora stopped walking, tilting his head back to examine the sky. "Do you think it snows in Radiant Garden?"

Riku remembered all at once about the scarf, still folded and waiting in a drawer. Sora was staring at him, waiting for an answer, and Riku cleared his throat. "It does, yeah."

"Good." Sora nodded, satisfied. He slid his arm through Riku's as they started walking again, leaning in for warmth until Riku pulled his arm free and wrapped it around Sora's shoulders instead. 

A dozen steps later, Riku asked, "Do you maybe want to visit the Land of Departure for a couple days? Only if you feel up to—"

"Yes!" Sora's face was lit up as he tilted it up to grin at Riku. They'd been stuck in one place too long, Riku supposed, glad to see Sora was feeling restless just like him. 

Aqua, Terra, and Ventus were thrilled to see them, Ventus hugging Sora so tightly that he squeaked. They sat around the table talking long after lunch was over, Sora begging for story after story about what they'd been up to while he'd been gone. Sora tired out quickly these days, but still pouted when Riku suggested that he might want to nap for a few hours if he really intended to stay up late enough to stargaze later. 

"Are you five?" Riku asked, roughing up Sora's hair until the pout melted into a grin. "Come on, if we make a detour through the library, I bet I can find something that interests you."

As predicted, Sora was absolutely delighted by the Keyblade Masters romance novels, plucking the most lurid-looking one off the shelf without hesitation, titled "Once Enchanted, Twice Shy" in cursive purple ink. He fell asleep against Riku's shoulder halfway through the first chapter; Riku sat the book carefully on the bedside table and slipped out of bed, tiptoeing out of the room. 

He spent a couple hours out on the lawn, letting Terra demonstrate exactly how out of shape Riku had gotten. When Riku went back upstairs, feeling like he might need a nap himself, Sora was propped up against the pillows, hair sticking out in every direction, nose buried in the book. 

"Has the dashing pirate captain won Master Laernu's heart yet?" Riku asked, kicking off his boots to line them up near the door. 

"Not yet." Sora looked up at Riku over the top of the book, eyes sparkling with amusement. "But there's only one bed in the inn's last room."

"Of course there is," Riku agreed, shaking his head. Crossing the room, Riku opened the desk drawer; the scarf was right where he left it, safe and soft as ever. Glancing behind him to make sure Sora wasn't looking, Riku pulled it out and turned so that it was hidden behind his back, using his knee to push the drawer shut. "I have something for you."

"Oh?" Sora let the book fall shut immediately, suddenly at full attention. "What?"

"Close your eyes," Riku ordered. Sora rolled his eyes a little but obeyed, holding his hands out expectantly and wiggling his fingers. Riku came back across the room to sit on the edge of the bed. He waited another few seconds, just to see Sora squirm with impatience, before dropping the scarf into his hands. 

"Ah!" Sora's eyes popped open when he felt the scarf spill over his hands, blinking in confusion for a second before he shook the scarf out and understood. "Oh, it's so soft. And pretty! Where'd you get it?"

"I, um." Riku cleared his throat, watching Sora wind the scarf around his neck. The colors really did suit him, the brown matching his hair, the dark gray making the blue of his eyes pop. "I made it."

"You…what?" Sora blinked. "You _made_ this?"

"I had a lot of time on my hands," Riku said quietly, eyes dropping. There was the rustle of blankets, and then Sora was climbing into Riku's lap, hugging him around the neck fiercely, knees on either side of Riku's thighs. Riku let his head fall forward into the curve of Sora's neck. The scarf smelled a bit funny from being in the drawer so long, but underneath he could smell Sora, warm and sweaty from sleep, alive.

For a few minutes the only sound was Riku's ragged breathing, and the soft drag of Sora's fingers through Riku's hair. 

"Did you make one for yourself?" Sora asked eventually. Riku murmured a no, voice muffled. Sora pushed him back by the shoulders so they could see each other. "Well, you have to! So we match! Blue like the ocean and yellow like the beach, so it'll keep you warm like when we're back home."

"It'll take me a while," Riku said solemnly, holding back a smile. "Winter might be over by the time I'm finished."

"That's fine," Sora announced, unlooping half his scarf to wind it around Riku's neck. "I don't mind sharing for now."

**Author's Note:**

> Master Laernu's name is Unreal backwards, because KH3 uses the Unreal Engine. Master Ynos is Sony backwards, and I made him up earlier for The Joining of Unlike Things. 
> 
> The yarn Riku picks for Sora is a real colorway called "Vampire Boyfriend" by KnitCircus, and I thought everyone had to know that.


End file.
